John Munson/The Star-LedgerNye County Sheriff's Detective Ed Howard walks in the desert across the California border from Pahrump, Nevada, where the empty car of Maureen Fields was found in February, 2006. Horace Langford Jr./Pahrump Valley TimesSuspect Paul Fields, (left), is questioned by Tim Miller, (center), of Texas Equusearch and Nye County (NV), Detective Davis Boruchowitz on Thursday.
A chance meeting at the Seaside Heights boardwalk this summer has triggered a renewed search of the Nevada desert for the body of New Jersey native Maureen Fields.

A volunteer organization that looks for missing persons, Texas EquuSearch, is now in rural Pahrump, Nev., employing a drone airplane and other high-tech devices to scour the desert for signs of a grave.

Fields, who moved with her husband to Nevada in 2004, vanished two years later. Her car was found off the road to Death Valley with her keys, purse, wallet, and credit cards still in it. Police said they have only one suspect in her disappearance: her husband, Bloomfield native Paul Fields. But the local district attorney has said there is insufficient evidence to charge him, and Paul Fields maintains his innocence.

"It’s a needle in a haystack, sure," said EquuSearch founder Tim Miller. "But you know what? We’ve located people before when there have been big searches that failed." EquuSearch also has posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of Maureen Fields, dead or alive. Until now, the only reward in the mystifying case was an unspecified amount offered by her husband in missing-person fliers he distributed in the area.

Horace Langford, Jr./Pahrump Valley Times The drone, being held here by Jacob Elson, is used in searches by the volunteer group Texas Equusearch. It flies low over the ground, and records images that are then fed into a computer for review. The group has brought the plane to Pahrump, NV this week to aid in its search for the body of missing New Jersey native Maureen Fields.

Paul Fields, who agreed to let Miller’s group search his land, did not return phone messages requesting a comment.

His lawyer, Harry Kuehn, said Miller’s group asked Fields for permission to search his 1-acre property with a lawn-mower-type device equipped with ground-penetrating radar.

"I gave Paul my opinion — that no good deed goes unpunished — but it’s up to him to decide," Kuehn said. "The only danger of talking to volunteers is there’s no credo, there’s no code, there’s no Fourth Amendment."

Fields agreed to the search, provided the searchers do not enter his mobile home, said Detective David Boruchowitz of the Nye County Sheriff’s Office. The detective said Fields rebuffed Miller’s suggestion he take a lie detector test, and told them, "You’re wasting your time because she’s not out there."

The chance meeting that triggered the latest development in the case occurred in July, when Miller was in New Jersey to help search for Julia Madsen, an elderly woman who had left her Shore vacation house for a walk in Island Beach State Park. (Madsen remains missing.) While at the Shore, Miller dined every night at Grif’s Crab House, a landmark of the Seaside Heights boardwalk. That same week in Nevada, Paul Fields went to court to have his missing wife declared dead.

And here is where coincidence came into play: Grif’s is owned by John Grifo, who, along with his wife, had attended North Arlington High School with Maureen Fields.

Miller had founded the volunteer search-and-rescue group in Dickinson, Texas, in 2000, after his family endured a 17-month wait to find the body of his missing teenage daughter, a crime victim. EquuSearch has helped locate over 100 sets of remains since then, along with several hundred missing persons. The unmanned surveillance plane was instrumental in seven of those finds.

In New Jersey, Maureen Fields’ family expressed gratitude for EquuSearch’s efforts. "I don’t know at this point whether it’s going to make a difference, but anything’s worth a shot," said Kathy Errico, Maureen’s sister, who lives in North Arlington. She said word of the search — coming 3½ years after Maureen’s disappearance — made her a bit weepy this week.

File photoMaureen Fields, missing person.

DAUNTING TERRAIN

Paul Fields has said he doesn’t know what happened to his 41-year-old wife but believes she may have run off — by herself or with someone else — and perhaps become the victim of foul play. He said he went to court in July to have her declared dead because that was the only way he could free up the couple’s jointly held assets.

Maureen Fields failed to show up for her job as a bank teller in Pahrump — an hour west of Las Vegas — in February 2006. When her car was found the day after she went missing, police initially believed it to be the site of a suicide: The seat was reclined, religious pamphlets were fanned out on the passenger seat, and a container for 30 Xanax pills was empty. They theorized she had taken the pills, then wandered into the desert to die.

As a result of that assumption, the initial search — an extensive one using dogs, horses, ATVs and a helicopter — focused on the area within three miles of the car.

This week’s search is looking miles farther — on the assumption her body was transported elsewhere.

The unmanned surveillance plane employed by EquuSearch flies at about 400 feet in the air, filming the terrain below it. The film is then fed into a computer software program that highlights any ground disturbance — an unexplained depression, for example. It can spot items as small as a Styrofoam cup.

However, the terrain around Pahrump is daunting: a rugged, choppy desert floor dotted with mesquite bushes.

Miller said that even if this week’s search is unsuccessful, it will not end his organization’s effort there. The group was successful in a Beaumont, Texas, case on its fifth visit and has been to Aruba eight times to search for student Natalee Halloway.